Generational Sentences: Childhood, Justice, and Family Separation

Session Submission Type: Pre-arranged Panel

Abstract

This paper session will feature participants from various international jurisdictions (e.g. US, UK, Czechia) who will discuss common, divergent, and emerging challenges faced by prisoners' families on a global scale––with a particular emphasis placed upon the figure of prisoners' children. In keeping with the themes of generational punishment, this panel will consider the relationship between penal power and family policy, bringing together the perspectives of scholars and activists to examine the ways in which family is constructed from within the prison.

Furthermore, the authors seek to explore the gendered dimensions of both punishment and care work, with the following questions structuring the panel: What happens when women find themselves behind bars at the same time as an incarcerated relative? What are the possibilities for 'doing family' in the carceral context? How can the children of prisoners be better supported by outside institutions? What unique pains of imprisonment do children experience due to their contact with the criminal justice system?

Subtopic

• Topic 3: Crime Correlates / Family and Intergenerational Perspectives (Intergenerational Criminology WG)

Chair

• Eliska Duskova, University of Cambridge

Individual Presentations

• Understanding Czech Children's Experiences of Parental Incarceration - Eliska Duskova, University of Cambridge

• Caring from within prison: how women renegotiate their caring roles towards co-incarcerated family members - Ariadne Fischer, University of Cambridge

• “It's nice to go home to your family, but… to do what?”: The possibilities and challenges of maintaining and constructing family in women’s open prisons - Daria Przybylska, University of Cambridge

• ‘You’ll never understand until it happens to you’: Exploring the impact on children and young people (CYP) of having a household family member in prison - Naomi Griffin, Newcastle University; Steph Scott, Newcastle University; Lisa Crowe, Newcastle University; Tracy Shildrick, Newcastle University; Shona Minson, University of Oxford; Nancy Loucks, Families Outside, Scotland (UK)